A normal goal of a live event organizer (promoter or producer) is to improve the user experience and increase the income derived from such an event. The revenues, including but not limited to ticket, merchandise sales and sponsor placement, are known to peak rapidly during the event, and taper off just as quickly the day after. Therefore, the organizer's objective is to increase the experience of the user around the live event schedule, a possible consequence being an increase of the revenues before and after the event.
It is key to note that a live event offers a unique opportunity to marketers, as it brings together proactive customers who express their interest in the artist or subject matter of the event, by spending money to buy a ticket and/or actively going to the venue. This customer is different from a passive TV or Internet viewer. Furthermore, interest in an event allows the marketers to determine the consumer “psychographic” profile, and therefore place advertisements and marketing messages within the context of customer personal taste. Since an event is frequently experienced with buddies, the marketer can not only reach the consumer with personalized messages, but also identify and target his circle of friends.
This traditionally assumes an effective preliminary publicity and communication campaign, but also, more recently, Web promotion. It turns out that customers today want more information about the event: practical information, program information, information on the artist's tour, other participating celebrities, bonuses, private details, exclusive content, and so on.
The customer also wants to participate, give his or her opinion, have discussions in forums around the event and now even become a reporter, not only to comment on this event, but to publish images or videos that he or she has captured with a cellular telephone or smartphone. To do this, the customer visits many sites, blogs, walls or discussion threads where he or she can leave an opinion on the event or the celebrity. For the singer Lady Gaga™ for example, the customer can access the website Ladygaga.fr™ to watch exclusive videos, talk with the artist and her fans on Facebook™, follow the news on Twitter™ and have conversations, even in real time, and see amateur videos recorded at her concerts on YouTube™, and so on.
The spectator, in his or her quest for information, adopts an active approach to research on the Web and him or herself sorts through the information received, between that truly concerning the event and that concerning other past or future events. To satisfy his or her need to communicate, the spectator usually navigates between the sites, services and social networks that he or she visits on a daily basis.
Thanks to the recent developments in social media, one could say that any popular live event begins at a virtual level before the actual show starts, through the interactive exchanges on entertainment and social networking sites. However, there is no centralized platform or technology to enable the fans to experience the virtual “pre-show”, in the context of the upcoming event. Clearly, if such a platform were available, it would both provide a service to the fans, and enable the event organizers to extend the show and their revenues along with it.
However, the spectator's activity during the event is usually limited to taking photographs or videos with his or her cellular telephone, or sending simple communications by SMS, even though this is paradoxically the time when his or her desire to communicate is greatest in order to share an exciting moment with friends, the community and even the artist. In practice, the use of telecommunications services is very limited, and videos and photographs are uploaded to the Internet after the event.
The communication and interactivity tools to which the spectator has access during the event indeed have a number of defects:                frequent transmission service denials: the cumulative bandwidth of public networks does not enable the real-time uploading of video streams coming from a multitude of mobile terminals or their re-broadcasting to an even larger number of terminals.        problems using the terminal: in a noisy, unruly and poorly lighted environment, the small size of the screen of a smartphone makes intensive use of a multitude of information and services organized in the form of conventional menus difficult. The user just gets tired of navigating and instead concentrates on a few services that he or she is accustomed to and of which he or she has pre-programmed the links for quick access.        